KSB’s MegaCPK: A Lean, Mean Combination

A team of some 200 engineers and technicians based in Frankenthal, Pegnitz (both in Germany), India and Brazil were involved in the MegaCPK project. They not only worked out the design modifications, they also adapted the production processes at KSB’s production sites around the world. Dr Norbert Kastrup, Head of Product Development — Process Engineering Pumps, describes the path taken.

Dr Kastrup, the CPK pump series has been around since the 1960s, and the Mega pump was introduced in the 1980s. As a rough estimate, there are probably hundreds of thousands of both types doing a good, successful job out there in the global chemical industry. So, why did you decide to develop a new pump type series?

Kastrup: Basically, there were two reasons for that. For one thing, the chemical industry’s efficiency criteria were becoming more stringent, and the hydraulic system of the CPKN, as the predominant pump on the European market, was not really amenable to further improvement. The Mega, however, which is more at home in Asia and South America, offered much more potential on that count. And since Mega users were asking for additional design variants and more flexibility anyway, the two pump series simply had to be combined to yield an all-market pump that would satisfy all criteria. For another, it lay within our own interest to concentrate our engineering and aftermarket efforts on a single pump type series.

The chemical industry is not necessarily known for its experimentiveness. Did the market have any reservations about the appearance of a whole new type series?

Kastrup: Such things always carry a risk, of course, but we received lots of encouragement from the chemical industry. Not only KSB, but the users, too, stood to minimise their spare parts management efforts. One Chinese chemical facility, for example, that placed orders for KSB pumps in Asia as well as in Germany was therefore using different types of pumps at one and the same location. Now, the user is enjoying a definite advantage in the form of smaller stocks of spare parts. Other aspects, like better energy efficiency and enhanced operating reliability, also help convince users. Finally, in most cases, it will be easy to replace an old CPKN or Mega with a new MegaCPK.

What are the prospects for the new pump?

Kastrup: For the chemical industry, energy efficiency is presently the number-one topic. The MegaCPK, with its optimised hydraulic system and correspondingly high efficiency, is setting new standards in that respect. In the late 1960s, the CPK itself set standards by serving as the virtual prototype for ISO 2858. I am convinced that the MegaCPK is going to set similar standards.